And Counting...

Thirty degrees this morning.  I'm getting down to the bottom of the split firewood pile, and have to dig out some of the wood from the dirt that the ground squirrels have thrown up as they build their burrows underneath this safe haven.  I used to send my youngest grandson mystery boxes when he was in first and second grade that included such treasures as a squirrel nest made of finely shredded inner bark and lined with soft grey belly fur, a huge molar from Louie (the pig), and an intact skeleton of a tree frog no bigger than my thumbnail.  I thought these things were just so neat, and a city kid would have something spectacular for show-and-tell.  Perhaps not responding was his dad's way of asking me to stop. 

My friend Florence and I have something in common...we are both compulsive counters.  It is one hundred fifty-three left-foot steps from the front porch to the gate of the goat pen (the right foot is the "and").  Yesterday it took one hundred eighty-six squeezes to milk out Ruth, three hundred forty-two for Inga, three hundred two for Cindy, and one hundred sixty-eight for Sheila.  I personally like to finish on an even number, but can't cheat to make it come out that way.  Odd numbers just seem incomplete to me.  Florence counts shovelfuls of dirt, nails hammered, etc.  She's quirky that way.